We'e hearing the phrase "violent protests" a lot lately.
Yet the protests over the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd two weeks ago are different.
For the first time in recent memory, the press is concentrating more on exposing the violence the hyper-militarization of America's police forces are capable of unleashing against protesters peacefully exercising their first amendment right to redress their grievances.
Another reason the media might finally be tuned in to the decades of police brutality it has traditionally ignored is it is being explicitly targeted.
Weeks ago, in Louisville, Ky., as protests were ramping up, police shot WAVE3 News reporter Kaitlin Rust with pepper balls.
CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested live on the air.
The "less-lethal" round police used again photojournalist Linda Tirado cost Tirado vision in her left eye.
Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Cole also sustained an eye injury.
Vice News correspondent Michael Adams held his press badge over his head after complying with a police command to lay on the ground, yet it didn't prevent his being pepper sprayed in the face.
Molly Hennesy-Fiske was shot several times in the leg with rubber bullets.
Hennessy-Fiske explained:
"I have never been shot at by police-even when covering protests overseas and war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Photojournalist Ed Ou, who has reported in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Iraq, added:
"They literally started throwing concussive grenades in our direction, in the middle of the journalists."
Mother Jones recently released video evidence of Minnesota state police and Anoka County Sheriff deputies slashing protesters' cars' tires, including those of journalists.
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